The project and exhibition ‘’Sensitive obscurities: exploring the queer (sub)conscious’’ comes from a deep desire to connect with the inner struggles, and then ultimately joys, of the queer body. By exploring the inner works of the experiences of five members of the large spectrum, that is the queer community in Rotterdam, the work connects with feelings of anger, loneliness, and abandonment. The reality of living within a queer body that is Othered, and often either put on a holy pedestal or seen as a devilish mistake. By not running away from the underlying abjection of these feelings, visual artist Rik Versteeg has embarked on a journey to create a storytelling exhibition, consensually exploring these very human journeys through a queer and post-feminist lens.

By applying values of radical intersectionality and with a strong focus on care, Licka Lolly, Roberto Angels, Lillith de Ville, Xiang Ye Yueng, and Fae, have been working directly with Rik to complete this visual journey, while also focusing on aftercare and support towards the participants, as vulnerability becomes an almost outspoken dance between the artist’s lens and the humans in front of it. By using a multidisciplinary approach that combines photography, fashion, film, and sound, we attempt a journey through honesty into the deep resonances of the vulnerable, by harnessing and reclaiming the forbidden.

Fae - Smile you're Queer

SUSPENSION
Practices of BDSM survive from some of the oldest textual records in the world, associated with rituals to the goddess Inanna. Inanna describes cross-dressing transformations and rituals “imbued with pain and ecstasy, bringing about initiation and journeys of altered states of consciousness.

This series was inspired by the Fetish and BDSM culture of the Queer and LGBTQIA+ community. This culture is often viewed as a subculture mainly because BDSM is often still regarded as “unusual” by some of the public.  A scene that is rarely accepted by the heteronormative society or the lgbtqia+ scene itself. Many people hide their learning from society since they are afraid of incomprehension and of social exclusion.

I see these practices as an example of “aesthetic sexuality”, in which a founding physiological or psychological impulse is irrelevant. Rather, sadism and masochism may be practiced through choice and deliberation, driven by certain aesthetic goals tied to style, pleasure, and identity. These practices, in certain circumstances and contexts, can be compared with the creation of art.

Suspension

Sticky and tired.

Sticky. 

Tired. 

Who I am is my calling. 

My queerness. 

Sticky. 

Tired. 

At the end of the day, 

even when all the layers are out, 

I am. 

Sticky and tired.

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Rik Versteeg